Why It Matters

The House Administration Subcommittee on Elections held an election security hearing on May 20 that exposed a deepening rift between what federal election security requires and what Congress is actually funding.

With the 2026 midterms less than six months away, the Trump administration has proposed cutting the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) budget by $707 million and has already paused election security activities there, putting the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in the position of filling a growing void with a shrinking budget.

The Big Picture

The hearing, titled "Examining Best Practices for Strengthening Election Security," convened four current and former EAC commissioners to discuss physical security, cybersecurity, and voter confidence measures. The session fits into a broader pattern of congressional oversight of federal election infrastructure dating back to the 2018 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian election interference and the 2019 House Administration Committee election security hearing.

But the context in 2026 is sharply different. The Trump administration has dismantled much of the federal architecture that those earlier hearings helped build, replacing career specialists with political appointees and proposing to eliminate CISA's election security program entirely in its fiscal year 2027 budget. Federal election security grants have fallen from a high of $425 million to just $15 million in 2025, a figure confirmed on the record by EAC Chairman Thomas Hicks during questioning.

What They're Saying

Subcommittee chair Rep. Laurel M. Lee (R-FL-15) highlighted state-level successes in physical and cyber security, and pointed to Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grants as a useful resource. Ranking member Rep. Terri A. Sewell (D-AL-7) had a sharply different assessment and connected the hearing directly to the Trump administration's record. Sewell said, "The cost of prevention is far lower than the cost of repairing public trust." And Donald Palmer, Former Commissioner, U.S. Election Assistance Commission said, "We are not doing everything we can."

The hearing's sharpest exchange came when Sewell pressed Hicks to confirm the grant funding collapse. He did so without hesitation, then acknowledged that state election officials have told him they "are gonna have to cut back on a few things." When Sewell turned to McCormick and asked what the $45 million appropriated for fiscal year 2026 actually amounts to per state, McCormick answered that the figure is roughly $250,000. Sewell noted that this figure cannot cover new voting systems, cybersecurity assessments, incident response, physical barriers, or voter registration database upgrades. "It's a minimum amount of money," she said.

Former Commissioner Donald Palmer, who has since joined the Heritage Foundation as a senior legal fellow for election integrity called for a fully funded vulnerability testing program as the highest priority, noting that the Secure IT Act, which required penetration testing of voting systems, was included in the National Defense Authorization Act but never received an appropriation. "The work is way too slow to stay ahead of our adversaries," he said. When Sewell asked whether this program was being funded, Palmer answered: "No. It's not being funded. And coming out of the nickels and dimes that we're funding in this that the EAC is finding in the sofa, trying to keep that alive."

EAC Commissioner Benjamin Holvland provided the hearing's most striking data point. A report shared with Congress estimates that replacing aging voting equipment nationwide would cost $2.7 billion. He noted that the EAC's field services team, responsible for supporting more than 8,000 election jurisdictions across the country, consists of just 10 people. The agency also absorbed a 15 percent budget cut last fiscal year, even as demand for its services increased.

The tone shifted when Rep. Mary E. Miller (R-IL-15) pressed Hicks on noncitizen voting, a line of questioning that Hicks deflected by noting the EAC does not run elections and that voter eligibility is a state matter. Miller then suggested that federal funding should come with conditions requiring photo ID and proof of citizenship, but Hicks held his ground. The exchange illustrated the divergent partisan frameworks operating beneath the surface of an ostensibly technical hearing.

Rep. Gregory F. Murphy (R-NC-3) raised Maryland's recent mailing of 500,000 incorrect mail-in ballots, using it to argue that election administration problems justify skepticism. Palmer agreed the error was serious, saying "the buck stops with the election officials," but cautioned against using individual mistakes to undermine confidence in the broader system.

Political Stakes

For the EAC witnesses, the hearing posed a dilemma. They serve under an administration that has proposed cutting their agency's budget by 38 percent, and one that also issued Executive Order 14248 directing the EAC to revise its voluntary voting system guidelines and withhold funding from states that do not comply with documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements. That order is currently the subject of active litigation in League of Women Voters v. Trump. Testifying before a Republican-led subcommittee, the commissioners had to defend the agency's continued relevance and resource needs without directly contradicting the administration's posture.

For the administration, the hearing created a political liability, since it has championed election integrity while cutting the agencies that operationalize it. If the 2026 midterms experience a security incident, the record established at this hearing will be difficult to walk back.

Holvland testified that much of the voting equipment currently in use is nearing the end of its recommended lifespan. Federal funding covers less than 5 percent of the estimated total cost of running elections since HAVA was passed in 2002. A 2024 national survey of election officials found that one-third have experienced harassment in connection with their work, and half knew someone who had left the profession due to safety concerns.

The Other Side

Republicans on the subcommittee argued that election administration is fundamentally a state responsibility and that federal involvement should be targeted and conditional. As evidence that states can and do fill security gaps without large federal grants, Chair Lee highlighted successful state-level models, including North Dakota's whole-of-government information-sharing approach and North Carolina's National Guard cyber monitoring program. Miller argued that any expansion of federal funding should be paired with voter ID and citizenship verification requirements. Palmer, despite his call for more funding, also acknowledged that the decentralized structure of U.S. elections is itself a security feature, preventing a single point of failure.

What's Next

Sewell submitted a request for unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter from 84 civil rights, labor, faith, and disability rights organizations led by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Leadership Conference calling on Congress to allocate significantly more funding for election administration in fiscal year 2027. The EAC's fiscal year 2027 Congressional Budget Justification was filed in April 2026 and is now before appropriators. With CISA's election security program proposed for elimination and the midterms approaching, the fiscal year 2027 appropriations process represents the last realistic legislative window to address the funding gaps documented at this hearing before Election Day.

The Bottom Line

Every witness at this election security hearing agreed that the federal government is not doing enough, but with the administration cutting budgets and the midterms six months out, the window to act is closing fast.

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